Tissue-specific elimination of alternative whole parental genomes in one barley hybrid

Chromosome elimination was studied in squash preparations of seeds of two different Hordeum crosses between diploid parents whose karyotypes allowed identification with unusual ease for Hordeum of the parental origins of the chromosomes being eliminated in each mitosis in embryos and endosperms. In both crosses, the mean chromosome number in hybrid tissues fell during several mitoses until nuclei became haploid in embryos and diploid in endosperms. Elimination was always uniparental, i.e. all chromosomes eliminated from a given tissue in a given cross were from the same parent. In H. marinum x H. vulgare cv. Tuleen 346, elimination involved the Tuleen 346 genome in the endosperm, but the H. marinum genome in the embryo. This is a good example of alternative elimination, i.e. uniparental elimination involving different parental genomes in different tissue of the same cross. In Tuleen 346 x H. bulbosum, the H. bulbosum genome was eliminated from both embryos and endosperms. — In H. marinum x Tuleen 346 endosperms, eliminated Tuleen 346 chromosomes were individually identifiable and tended to be eliminated in non-random order: the nucleolar chromosomes, T3-7 and T6-2 first, followed by chromosomes T5-1, T7-3, T2-6 and 4, with chromosome T1-5 last. — The nucleolar constrictions were expressed in eliminated satellite chromosomes from Tuleen 346, but not in those from H. marinum or H. bulbosum. Eliminated chromosomes differed from retained ones in having smaller centromeres and tending before, during and after elimination to occupy more peripheral regions of mitoses. Elimination may result primarily from specific suppression of genes involved in centromere function, perhaps by DNA methylation.